Amber Lea Starfire,
at Writing Through Life, has begun her new Reading for Writers series, focused
on memoir, beginning with Beryl Markham’s West with the Night.
Amber’s goal is to help us read like writers
in order to make us better writers.
Participants discuss tone, voice, pace, structure, the
writer’s style, and word choices.
I encourage you to read the book and participate. Markham’s
writing style is one of my favorites—I often read her passages several times to
take in the beauty and art of her words.
She’s a master wordsmith.
Ernest Hemingway said
of West with the Night, “Written so well, and marvelously well, that I was
completely ashamed of myself as a writer…. [Markham] can write rings around all
of us who consider ourselves as writers….”
From the back cover: Markham’s “storytelling easily earns
her a place on the shelf with contemporaries (and friends) such as Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry and Isak Dinesen. West with the Night is one of the world’s great
adventure stories, a true classic of twentieth-century literature.”
Even if you don’t read the book, I hope you’ll read Amber’s
weekly blog posts and take part in the discussions that follow. Don’t miss this
opportunity to enjoy a masterpiece as well as to grow as a writer.
Click on Amber’s post for this week,
